How different is life as a teenager from generation to generation? That’s what 15-year-old Daniel Brown sought to find out when he invited his grandfather, Steve Garris, to the StoryCorps studio to share what it was like growing up in a small southern town. Garris reflects on his youth, from misadventures to falling in love with the music that became the soundtrack to his life in Andrews, South Carolina.
TRANSCRIPT:
Brown: Where did you grow up?
Garris: Grew up in Andrews, South Carolina. Andrews is the lower part of the state in Georgetown County. Real small town.
Brown: What was your childhood like?
Garris: Oh, it was great. It couldn't have been better. It was in the ’50s. Grew up in a neighborhood, had lots of kids and I mean we did roller skating, bicycle riding, played army. Just played ‘til dark. It was very safe. Just a great place to grow up.
Brown: I'm 15 years old now. What were your days like when you were my age?
Garris: When I was 15, it was good. 15 was good. Played basketball. Only had 42 people in my class, so I got to play on the high school team. I couldn't have done that otherwise. I wasn't that good. But I played a lot of basketball, played football, played all the sports. But at 15 is when I had my driver's license. I'd get the car one day a week, ride around in the afternoon. Where you gonna ride in my small town? It was ridiculous to start off with, because there was no place to go. It was...we had two red lights. So, you went out to the country and you rode around. Well, what were you gonna do out there? It was just nothing to do. So anyhow, one afternoon we decided to go to the County Line Road. And we were going to race. I had a Valiant, Slant 6-cylinder Valiant, fairly new. And this other guy had a 1956 Ford. And so, we raced. There was a guy in the car named Jake Ziegler. And the road ran out, and then went to a dirt road. When I got on that road it was sandy because they had just scraped it. And so, I lost control of the car. We totaled the car. And we never saw, Jake or I, neither one of us saw a doctor. Neither--we had no cuts on us or anything. We got the car towed back in town and had to go buy a new car. Of course, I didn't get to drive it for a long, long, long time.
Brown: What kind of music did you listen to?
Garris: Oh, R&B. I was a big R&B guy. In my town, the only place you could buy a record was the grocery store or the dime store, the “five and ten.” And records cost a dollar each. Now, I worked at the grocery store and I was making 50 cents an hour. So, a dollar was two hours’ worth of work. And had no FM radios. And if you would have had FM radios, they were playing real soft elevator music. We had one station, it was 30 miles away. It was Kingstree. But at night you could get the station from Knoxville, Tennessee. And it played the blues, and it came in clear. And so we listened to a lot of blues. But I was a big R&B guy. Started collecting records then, and now I have a collection of probably five hundred 45 records.
Brown: Jeez.
Garris: Yeah, I got a lot of 45s. I hadn't even brought those out yet, Daniel.
Brown: Where are they?
Garris: Yeah, I got them all over the place. Yeah. And they're very valuable. They started there. Yeah.
